


and that's canon!

by badskeletonpuns



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Community AU, Fluff and Humor, Humor, Multi, Parody, wolf 359 secret santa 2016
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-16
Updated: 2016-12-16
Packaged: 2018-09-09 01:29:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8870503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badskeletonpuns/pseuds/badskeletonpuns
Summary: Based off of this tumblr post au that I made up, here is my Wolf 359 secret santa gift for whoopsiedaisiedoo! There's paintball fights, zombie problems, mutant plant monsters, and probably more shipping than is really wise. How are any of them passing their classes again? No one is sure.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [whoopsiedaisiedoo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whoopsiedaisiedoo/gifts).



 

  1. **introduction (give me your hands and show me the door, because i cannot stand to wait anymore)**



 

Eiffel doesn’t start the study group for Chemistry 102. He doesn’t even intend to  _ show up _ to the study group, but the flyer promised snacks and was handed to him by a slight girl with eyes blue like those Christmas icicle lights, and, well… He always was a sucker for a pretty face. Also, he’s teetering on the edge of failing this class, and could use the help that came from the type of people who did start study groups. 

Hera _does_ start the study group. She’s determined to do this college thing without running back to her aunt, because Miranda Pryce might have been on the Goddard school board but Hera does not need her help to succeed. She is good enough, she promises herself, and she can do this. She smiles extra sweetly at the two women arguing with each other in the hallway, and convinces both of them to take a flyer. They’re kind of scary, but she’s heard them talking in class and knows that they know the material probably almost as well as she does. It’s a start, right? How many people does a study group really need, after all?

Minkowski joins because she had been planning to start a study group already. She knows she works better in a group setting, and maybe with a couple other people around to mediate the tension between her and Lovelace they would actually get something done instead of arguing about the best methods to learn the material. (No, she doesn’t regret her decision to join the moment she sees the epitome of a class clown, Douglas Eiffel, sitting at the study table. That would be rude. She regrets her decision the moment he says that he “lost his study notes” for the previous week of classes, and if he could borrow someone else’s that would be so cool of them.) 

Lovelace has been at this stupid community college longer than anyone else in this study group, and at this point she’s convinced the Dean is actively trying to stop her graduating. Her old study group had been dissolved - something about an ‘anarchic spirit’ not being ‘good for class morale’, or something. She was pretty certain Hilbert had purposefully ruined their projects and lied about their grades, but hadn’t been able to prove anything. Still. She couldn’t let the same thing happen to these three. So she joins the study group, but resolves not to get too attached in case Hilbert pulls any more tricky business. 

No one is sure how Hilbert ends up in the group. He’s  _ teaching the class.  _ Somehow, though, he tends to be there. He sips coffee everyone is fairly certain he brews out of seaweed and the crushed dreams of students, grades papers, and makes the occasional sarcastic comment. They tell themselves they keep him around so that they can make sure he’s not unfairly grading student’s papers. Somewhere along the way they maybe end up actually being friends with him, but no one is going to admit it. 

Somehow, in between complaining about Dean “Five Time Winner Most Terrifying Smile Award” Cutter, dodging the school’s quasi-legal security team of Kepler and Jacobi, and doing their level best to convince Hilbert that they are definitely studying and they all deserve to pass, all of them become friends. 

But… There's nothing preventing any one of them from looking at any of the others as a romantic prospect. Which is weird, sometimes. 

  1. **Eiffel & Hera (the school dance we don’t talk about)**



Hera will probably be the country's first female president someday, and that is just one reason off of the list of many that she should not be looking at Eiffel like he hung the stars in the sky specifically for this moment. 

Which, he sort of did, but only insofar is that he helped Hera organize this end-of-year dance and he'd been in charge of hanging the decorations. So the twinkle star lights had literally been hung by him.

And he had maybe done it a little bit for her. 

Or a lot for her. 

What could he say, Hera had those electric blue eyes and a sad face that could probably convince small animals to help her clean things. It could definitely convince Eiffel. 

So he gave up a Saturday to help string lights and hang crepe paper - and if he took a couple of extra moments just to make Hera laugh by wrapping himself in extra streamers and doing his best/worst impression of The Mummy, there was nothing weird about that. It was normal for him to notice the way her nose crinkled up really adorably when she smiled, or the way her whole body shook when she laughed. 

They were just good friends. Those were things normal friends noticed about each other. 

And here, at the dance, they were still just good friends. Good friends who happened to enjoy slow dancing with each other. 

They hadn't danced at first. Just talked while they stood on the sidelines, enjoying the fruits of their labor with a healthy dose of making fun of the terrible cheap DJ that Cutter had hired. The dance had actually been going really well - no dubiously safe snack products or terrifying mascots, and there were a fair amount of people there and the lights were set to their most twinkly and emotionally manipulative setting. Somehow, no one had Eiffel’d the dance (even Eiffel himself, who still wasn't sure why Hera had wanted  _ his _ help in the first place). 

It had been nice.

Friendly. 

But then, then the music had changed, from some ridiculous middle-school worthy pop tune to something a little softer Eiffel didn't recognize. And Hera had smiled at him, all bright eyes and a dangerous amount of hope, and offered him her hand. 

“Douglas Eiffel, would you do me the honor of dancing with me?” 

The vocalist in the song was singing about being so close, and the lights seemed to halo just behind Hera’s face. She looked at him like he wasn't the failure so many people expected him to be, like he was someone who could actually do things when people asked him to. Like she trusted him.

And, well, what kind of terrible person would break that trust? 

  1. **Kepler & Jacobi (the paintball game we also don’t talk about)**



Jacobi’s knuckles were bruised from where he’d fended off a melee attack by a desperate loner in Urania’s halls.

Kepler had paint flecking his arms like multi-colored freckles, a byproduct of enjoying being close enough to his victims to see the fear in their eyes when he shot them. 

They were both breathing hard, tearing down the hallways of the Hephaestus Science building, hot on the track of one Victoire Fourier. Well known as one of Goddard’s smartest French exchange students, Victoire had actually been faring very well in the competition until she’d run out of protein bars and been forced to leave her well-defended hideout. 

She was out of time, out of ammo, and in a whole lot of trouble. And now, after all that has passed, she is running. 

As Victoire rounds a corner ahead of them, Kepler takes a moment to evaluate his knowledge of the building. His stop is abrupt and sudden, Jacobi only just catching himself behind him. 

“Daniel,” Kepler says, knowing full well what it does to Jacobi when he uses his first name. There’s a flush running high across the other man’s cheeks and a grin sharp as any knife on his face. Kepler grins back. “Keep her running - lead her towards the biology hallways.” 

Jacobi steps into Kepler’s space, and if this was a real emergency this would be the part where Kepler would berate him for not immediately following orders. But this is Goddard, and this is a game of paintball for a prize he can’t even remember right now, and Kepler can’t pretend he’s not enjoying the heat of Jacobi’s chest against his. “Sir, yes, sir,” Jacobi whispers, and he has the audacity to wink at Kepler before turning and chasing Victoire back down the hall. 

Kepler laughs, and as he jogs down the shortcut to where he’ll cut Victoire off just in front of the Biology department, he makes a very detailed plan in his mind of all of the things he would like to do to Daniel Jacobi after they win this game. 

(“Are you guys even students!?” Victoire shouts at them after she’s been splattered with red paint like blood dripping down her formerly white shirt. Her words don’t matter at this point, the two of them are still high off the thrill of the kill, and she swears at them in French and stalks off. They aren’t students. They don’t really care.)

  1. **Eiffel & Minkowski (the halloween that we only talk about when we’re drunk, like, ****_really_** **drunk)**



“If we’re going to die here,” Minkowski pants, wielding a table leg like a club and trying very hard to be nonlethal, “I should probably admit that I am, actually, dressed as Milly from Seven Brides For Seven Brothers, and you are not allowed to make fun of me for picking a nerdy costume when you are literally wearing a Jedi outfit you made yourself.” 

Eiffel shakes his head, the motion turning into a duck when a zombified student tried to take a bite out of his nose. “Wouldn’t dream of it, Commander.” He smiles, the expression fleeting but genuine. “A Jedi would never be so un-chivalrous.” 

She takes out someone she’s pretty sure sat next to her in her math lab that semester with one well placed swing, and takes a break in the zombie wave as an opportunity to grab Eiffel’s hand and start running. 

When they finally find a classroom with an open door, Minkowski wastes no time pulling Eiffel into it behind her and slamming the door. It doesn’t lock, so she starts pushing desks up against the handle. 

It takes a few moments for her to realize that Eiffel isn’t helping her, and when she turns to look at him he’s braced himself against one of the desks and his breathing is coming hard and fast. “Are we,” he says, but has to swallow before he can keep talking. “We aren’t actually going to die here, right?” 

Minkowski has the inappropriately gleeful thought that she has finally proven Lovelace wrong once and for all and that Minkowski  _ would _ be the best leader in a zombie apocalypse. She tamps down on the impulse to go find Lovelace and brag about it, instead leaving her work on the door to sit next to Eiffel on top of a desk. 

He’s slumped over, head resting in his hands. She clears her throat, calls him Doug, and ignores how they’ve been at each other’s throats for the past semester over the right way to take notes (color coded versus not all), the best studying method (listen, write, test your knowledge versus ‘convince Hera to make me a study guide’) and instead looks him in the eyes and promises that they’re going to be okay.  They’ll figure something out, she tells him, they’ll make the one-in-a-million shot and save their friends, themselves, and the school. 

And Eiffel listens to her, and his eyes are huge and dark but the longer, she talks, the less scared they get. 

When Minkowski stops talking, there might have been a moment. Despite Eiffel and Hera’s frankly adorable shy flirtations all year, despite the fact that she knows Dominik told her he’d wait for her at home, despite the way she can never seem to drive Isabel Lovelace fully from her mind…

There might have been a moment where she was still looking into Eiffel’s eyes, and their faces might have been a little closer than was friendly. 

Then they hear the sound of the zombies at the door and they both glance over, and when she looks back Eiffel isn’t looking at her anymore. He’s looking at the air-conditioning unit on the wall, and saying something about how he saw an episode of this TV show once and he’s pretty sure that viruses like this can’t survive below a certain temperature. 

The main temperature control is in the library, and the zombies are rattling the door to their classroom. 

Eiffel and Minkowski see the maintenance vent at the same time, and have the same idea. “All vents lead to the library!” he proclaims far too confidently, but it’s not like they have any other options. 

The desks are slipping from the door, and the harsh sound of the desk feet scraping against the tiled floor is louder than Minkowski feels like it should be.

At least it covers up the zombies moaning, she muses as she hoists Eiffel up above her shoulders. He’s just gotten all the way into the vent and is reaching back down for her when the desks finally give way and the zombies burst into the room. 

He looks like he wants to say something, but can’t figure out what.

So Minkowski says it for him, trusting that Eiffel, of all people, will get the reference. “I love you,” she says, channeling Carrie Fisher with every word. 

He looks a little bit like he’s going to cry now, and she’s worried she made the wrong reference until he nods, whispers, “I know,” and backs into the air duct like Han Solo descending into the carbonite. 

This probably makes them friends now, Minkowski realizes, and something about that is a little unsettling. The Renée Minkowski of two years ago would never have been friends with someone quite this ridiculous - even if she had wanted to, she never would have had the chance.

She’s changed. 

She hopes it’s been for the better. 

Lovelace rears up in front of her, ashen skin and bloody grin a little more attractive than they should have been. 

Minkowski snaps out of her reverie to punch her friend, because like  _ hell _ she’s going down without a fight. 

  1. **Lovelace & Minkowski (that discussion we never talk about in front of minkowski and lovelace, because we like living.)**



“Look, you can’t prove that they  _ don’t _ secretly make out in the study room before the rest of us get here,” Eiffel insisted.

Hera shook her head. “The lack of evidence against something is not proof for it.” 

Across the table from their debate, Hilbert was steadfastly trying (and failing) to ignore Eiffel and Hera’s debate and grade his Biology 101 class’s papers. “I am not saying I agree with Hera,” he began carefully, “but I have not seen anything that could indicate a probability that Lovelace and Minkowski are physically involved in some way.” 

Eiffel sighed. “Have you two never seen a romcom ever in your lives? Or, while I’m at it, have you ever been in a room with the two of them when they’re arguing? Enemies to lovers is a classic trope, and the sexual tension in those looks between the two of them is thick enough to cut with a knife.”

“Just because  _ you _ are sexually attracted to both of them does not mean they’re both sexually attracted to each other,” Hilbert muttered, and Eiffel’s offended response was cut off by the doors to the study room swinging open and Minkowski and Lovelace bursting in, caught mid-argument. 

Both women were furious, spitting insults that are increasingly tangential from the original discussion and definitely getting into each other’s space in a decidedly different from friendly manner. Eiffel didn’t say a word, just gestured at the two of them and shrugged. Sometimes he didn’t even need words to prove his point - he just needed that angry flush spilling over Minkowski’s shoulders, the way Lovelace stepped closer to jab her finger into Minkowski’s face and tilted her head just so and if you took away the angry words passing between them it would look more than a little like they were about to kiss. 

Actually, you really didn’t even need to take away the angry words. It still looked like they were about to kiss, just like, really angrily. 

Eiffel has to admit that maybe Hilbert is right, just a little bit, about being attracted to both of them. 

But Eiffel was also right about the sexual tension between Minkowski and Lovelace, and when he pointed at the two of them, then made a V with his fingers and stuck his tongue through it, both Hera and Hilbert nod (if somewhat reluctantly on Hilbert’s part, and blushing bright, bright red on Hera’s). 

He was honestly more surprised that both Hilbert and Hera understand the gesture than he is that they agreed with him about the tension between Minkowski and Lovelace. 

  1. **in the end, friendship really is magic (oh, i love you more than words could say)**



They make it work, somehow. 

Hilbert never tells anyone about the time he walked in on Lovelace and Minkowski during the school-wide “The Floor Is Lava” game, wearing a lot less clothes than usually and suspiciously flushed. In exchange, they never tell anyone about that time he specifically manipulated the group into growing a sentient, carnivorous plant monster for their final. And told them he’d give give the whole study group As in the class if they could convince the plant to eat the Dean. 

(They would have done it for free, honestly, but they were never going to tell him that. Besides, the security team ended up destroying most of the plant before it did any real damage, and he still gave them a passing grade on the project). 

Lovelace and Minkowski do actually try dating, in the end. 

It was an experience for everyone involved. Neither woman actually admits if they broke it off or kept dating, but just toned it way the hell down. 

No one else is brave enough to ask them either way. 

At some point in between helping Hera win the debate tournament and rescuing her from that time the security team’s student liaison, Alana, tried to manipulate her into leaving the study group, Eiffel comes to a realization.

No, wait, he doesn’t come to a realization.

Lovelace and Minkowski corner him after a study group meeting one day, tell him to get his shit together or not, but either way, to let Hera know sometime before the next century because this waiting is not fair to her. 

It’s eye-opening. 

He and Hera do have their heart-to-heart, even if it wasn’t exactly how Lovelace and Minkowski probably intended. 

Hey, hushed conversations while pulling yourselves through the vents of the school while trying to rescue your friends from the insane security team is a totally legitimate way to have heartfelt emotional confessions. 

They don’t destroy the school in the end, even if there is a lot of property damage from the various paintball fights or pillow-wars or possible zombie infestations. 

Most of the group even comes out of Biology with an A!

“At least we were here together, right? That’s what really matters.” 

“Shut up, Eiffel, I know you ate the last of the cookies that the Glee club gave out when they went caroling.” 

They make it work.

  1. **bonus: doug and hera in the moooorning!**



[CAMERA OPENS UP, DOUG & HERA SITTING ON TWO STOOLS. ACROSS FROM THEM IS ISABEL LOVELACE, GRUMPILY LOOKING AROUND THE ROOM. BEHIND THEM, THE GLASS DOORS OF THE STUDY ROOM RECORDING STUDIO ARE LOCKED TO KEEP OUT THE SHOW’S MANY FANS.]

DOUG [HUSHED ASIDE TO LOVELACE]: We really appreciate you doing this. 

HERA: Three, two one...

DOUG & HERA, IN SYNC: Doug and Hera in the moooorning!

DOUG: And we’re back, look who’s here - Isabel Lovelace!

HERA: Isabel, how _ do  _ you stay so attractive and simultaneously terrify most of the student body?

LOVELACE: Diet, exercise, genetics. [PAUSE] Napalm helps.

DOUG & HERA: [FAKE LAUGHTER] 

HERA [AS DOUG KEEPS LAUGHING]: Sure, sure. 

DOUG: Hey, so it seems as though we have a clip - you want to set that up for us, Isabel? 

LOVELACE [VISIBLY CONFUSED, IRRITATED]: Why do you keep calling me by my first name? What clip? 

DOUG: [POINTS INTO CAMERA, SMILES TO CUE CLIP]

HERA [BAD IMITATION OF LOVELACE]: “Hey, my name’s Isabel Lovelace…”

DOUG [AN EVEN WORSE IMITATION OF LOVELACE]: “... I like fitness, and threatening the evil administration with napalm.”

LOVELACE: [LOOKING AROUND ROOM FOR THE RECORDED CLIP ON A SCREEN, CAMERAS, BROADCASTING EQUIPMENT, ANYTHING, AND FINDING NOTHING. EVEN MORE CONFUSED AND IRRITATED.]

HERA [CONTINUING HER BAD IMITATION OF LOVELACE]: “I’m so tall-”

DOUG [HIS IMITATION OF LOVELACE GETTING PROGRESSIVELY WORSE] “-muscles everywhere, my lips are the color of the blood of my enemies.” 

LOVELACE: Guys, what’s going on? Where are the cameras?

DOUG: Oh, we’re not filming this.

HERA: Yeah, who’d wanna watch this?

[A MOMENT OF SILENCE. LOVELACE LOOKS MURDEROUS.]

LOVELACE: Guys, it’s  _ six am. _ [SIGHS] I’m leaving. [REMOVES THE NOW-KNOWN TO BE FAKE MIC FROM HER SHIRT, STALKS OFF.] 

HERA: We’re not gonna have her back. 

[AFTER A MOMENT, DOUG & HERA SPEAK IN SYNC]: Doug and Hera in the mooo-

LOVELACE [OFFSCREEN]: NO!

[AND SCENE]

**Author's Note:**

> all credit for the community references and jokes goes to dan harmon and the russos and whoever else was involved in the writing of that show - certainly not me! hope you enjoyed, whoopsiedaisiedoo!!


End file.
